Enjoying Texas !

We live in San Antonio and have so many wonderful towns close to the city that we decided to have lunch Yesterday with my parents in Fredericksburg, Texas. On our way back we stop in Johnson City with the kids to see how this wonderful little town decorates the town for Christmas.

Christian and Veronica in Fredericksburg, Texas.

Johnson City, Texas

My parents with my kids in a wonderful German restaurant in Fredericksburg, Texas.

"Daily Survival Kit"

A good neighbor had a Holiday party yesterday and she gave us this survival kit that I really liked so I want to share it with you ;-}.

TOOTHPICK is remind you to pick out the good qualities in others.

RUBBER BAND is to remind you to be flexible. Things might not always go the way you want, but they will work out.

BAND-AID is to remind you to heal hurt feelings, yours or someone else's.

PENCIL is to remind you to list your blessings everyday.

CHEWING GUM is to remind you to stick with it. You can accomplish anything!

MINT is to remind you that you are worth a mint.

CANDY KISS is to remind you that everyone needs a kiss or hug everyday.

TEA BAG is to remind you to relax daily and go over your list of blessings.

Finally I finish my ring and pendant.

I mentioned I will be posting my final piece with the copper etched and my ring with the reticulation.
I finished the copper etched piece and I like it so much that I decided to make earrings for the pendant.

The earrings were not rivet because they are very small and I did not wanted to miss any detail in the copper etched. I soldered the copper to the brass.



This is my ring I made using the techniques I learned in my metals class.
I have my reticulation in silver all the way on the top of my ring with some LOS to give the reticulation more personality ;-}. I wanted to play with layers and I used brass, faux bone and my silver to create this piece.
The way I attached my layers was my soldering two brass tubes to my first brass layer and then solder that piece to my sterling ring band. Finally I ensemble the layers one by one and riveted the tubes.
I enjoyed a lot making this ring and I will be making more in the future !

Next Show of the Season.

This year I was invited to be part of a group of artist for the annual Holiday open house organized by The Southwest School of Art and Craft.
This wonderful art event is named Art-i-copia.
If you live in the area I will love to see you there ! ;-}

Having fun in my metals class

I have been taking metals classes since 2006 and I LOVE them but it was very funny that since then I never had a class about etching, cold joins and inlay.
When I knew this class was going to be open in South West School of Art and Craft given by Gary Schott, I was very excited.
We did etching using a saline solution that can etch your metal in one hour ! I was surprise to see how fast and easy this can be. I love the texture I got in my copper metal piece.


I had a 2.5 inches by 2.5 inches piece of copper etched and I love the final results, when I had my piece I started to look for possibilities to make a jewelry piece with the etching.

This is what I came out with ! I will be attaching my etched metal to the brass with three brass rivets. This is going to be a necklace. The brass chain that will be added in my piece will have Mexican Milagros charms hanging from it.




The inlay technique was very fun to make. I used a copper sheet and soldered brass wire to it for the inlaying. When I had my piece finish I decided to make hearts with it.
As you may have notice already ;-} I am obsess with hearts. I will never get bored with making them, every heart I make has a very particular feeling and I really like that.

This was my first piece I made with my inlay. The heart was attached to the brass with the stilt tab technique that I learned during our cold joins section of the class.



These earrings were attached by soldering the hearts to the brass metal.




My final piece with my inlay is this big Heart pendant. I used the stilt tab connection in this piece too.

I also learned to do reticulation in this class but to be very honest with you ;-} I was not very good at it !!!! I love the look of the reticulation in silver but I will have to keep working on that.
With my reticulation I will make a ring. I will post my ring project in a later day.
In general I was very happy on this class, I learned a lot of new techniques that I am sure I will be using a lot in my future designs.
Thanks Gary for such a wonderful class !!!!!

New Adventures with Bronze Clay

I love to work with metal clays and create a lot of different designs but I notice that although I LOVE to wear bracelets or cuffs I have not made almost any of them.

A really good friend of mine is celebrating her 30 years anniversary with her wonderful store here in San Antonio and she is organizing an event for next month for the celebration. She invited some artist to make bracelets ( her favorite jewelry piece) to make an incredible "Bracelet Show."

I was one of the lucky ones to get invited and this invitation made me think about why I have not been making any bracelets.

I am happy to participate in this event and also I am happy to have the opportunity to experiment with bracelets designs with metal clay.

The first design I have in my head was of two angels holding a big heart in the center and the best metal clay for the feeling I wanted in the design was bronze clay.



As you can see the angels are not holding the heart in my final design. I decided to change a little the form in the moment I was working with the piece but I am happy with the new design. ;-}

This piece was a challenge for me because is formed by pieces that I assembled together little by little.

The heart was made first, then I made the faces and carved them, my next step was to hand sculpt the torsos, then the lower part of the dresses, the arms, one wing in each angel, the other wing and add the hearts in their arms and finally attached the angels to the heart.

I was afraid the piece will not fired in one piece but when I took the cuff out of the charcoal and saw her in one piece, I was VERY happy !!!!!!

Now I have to anneal the piece to be able to recover the form of the cuff.

This will be my last test to confirm if my cuff is perfectly sinter.

Muertitos Fest 2009

We had a great time last week, November 6, at the Muertitos Fest at Say Si in San Antonio.

This wonderful organization has been making this fest for three years and they showed the incredible art work of their students during this fest. All the work and exhibitions are related to the day of the dead in Mexico.

My students had their pieces exhibited in the gallery and I was happy to see that almost all the pieces were sold ;-}. They did an amazing job !

If you live in the area you must have to come visit them and make your plans for next year fest!

My kids were very happy to see all the wonderful art and the altars. I enjoyed telling them about the meaning of every piece they saw !

More work by the talented students at Say Si.

Some of my students work and my necklace in the gallery.

I Love this skull !!!!!!!

I am the Site of the week at All Things Metal Clay.

I was selected to be the Site of the week at All Things Metal Clay .

Elaine Luther has a wonderful blog were she talks about metal clay and the jewelry business. She not only writes about metal clay but gives you a guide in a lot of topics that are very helpful for anyone in the art business.

She talks about techniques, selling online, about inspiration, information about contests and call for entries and much more.

Thank You Elaine for having me as your Site of the week!

Say Si Bronzclay class.

Thank You to Morgan, Amber, Ruby, Camille, Lou Lou and Luke !

I had a great time working with you all !

All the pieces from the workshop.

Ruby's Sacred Heart.



Morgan's Flower and Sacred Heart.

Morgan's Sacred Heart and Sun.

Bronzclay Workshop at Say Si.

A couple of weeks ago I got the wonderful opportunity to teach a workshop with metal clay at Say Si in San Antonio, Texas.


Say Si is an amazing organization that serves the youth with a year round non-profit multidisciplinary arts program that provides students ,from middle school and high school age, opportunities to develop artistic and social skills.


The workshop was focus on making pieces, sacred hearts, for their annual day of the dead festival exhibition. The third Annual Muertitos fest will take place in November 5, 6 and 7.


The students that were chosen to be part of the class were Camille, Morgan, Amber, Lou Lou, Ruby and Luke. They all are very talented and creative, each one of them designed their own pieces and did a great job.

All of my students were very curious to work with this new medium, they could not believe that the clay will convert into metal. For me the experience was very educational too. They were so natural and did not hesitate at all when creating their work. They took the medium without any fears and I think that is the best way to approach any challenge. The only tools I gave them were a pvc tube to roll the clay, a polymer clay heart to form the volume of their piece, a neddle tool, x-acto and a carving tool.

Altough we have some little problems , like breaking the pieces, I was there to help them recover the work and fixed the broken pieces. they were always in a good mood and ready to fix the problem.

At the end each of them make their two sacred hearts and because we have some clay left I told them they could make another piece. In our 11 hours class we manage to created almost 20 pieces in all.

Ruby's first Sacred Heart

Ruby's Virgen of Guadalupe

Amber's Sacred Heart

Amber's Sacred Heart

Lou Lou's Sacred doble crown heart

Lou Lou's Sun and Moon

Lou Lou's Sacred Heart

Camille's Sacred heart

Camille's Sacred Heart

Luke's Calavera

Luke's Sacred Heart

Luke's Sacred Heart

Luke's Calavera earrings.